Bookas Isip

Bookas Isip We sell books, mostly pre-owned, about philosophy, history, social sciences, Filipiniana, poetry and

For bibliophiles (hoarders) there is probably no greater thrill and joy than an unexpected find in a secondhand shop.Whi...
28/09/2024

For bibliophiles (hoarders) there is probably no greater thrill and joy than an unexpected find in a secondhand shop.

While there are plenty of illegally printed copies of "Cain's Jawbone" in the orange shop, an authentic copy is quite scarce in the Philippines, and the "mining" competition can be intense.

In case you are not familiar with the title, "Cain's Jawbone" was a literary murder mystery from the 1930s. What makes it fiendishly difficult is that all 100 chapters of the book were not published in the correct sequence. So the reader has to unscramble everything and put the chapters in the correct order to solve the mystery, that is identify the six murder victims and their murderers.

To date there have been only three persons who had solved the mystery -- according to the publishers -- and the solution remains a secret.

Will I be able to solve it? Maybe not. I read the "first" ten chapters and observed that the tone and writing style remains the same. So stylistic clues are out. But there are plenty of historical and literary allusions -- mostly English -- that I believe will be instrumental in the solution.

Note: Das Sozial Kaufhaus (literally the social department store) is a secondhand shop that sells practically everything: appliances, furniture, clothes, books etc. Items on sale are all donations. BUT the Kaufhaus screens these donations : junk is junk, and only functioning/usable items are accepted. All the proceeds go to charity, to help support refugees.

Germany produced some of the greatest and most influential thinkers and philosophers in the world, but their books are s...
12/09/2024

Germany produced some of the greatest and most influential thinkers and philosophers in the world, but their books are shockingly hard to find even here in their homeland. One small corner is devoted to philosophy in Thalia - Germany's biggest bookstore chain - where you will find mostly books by Kant and Arendt ( because fascism and totalitarianism are again topical ), while two whole floors are devoted to contemporary bestsellers and the latest craze in dystopian fantasy 🤷

Nietzsche's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is my first philosophy book purchase after 1 year and 6 months in this country. And this pocketbook, which costs €5 or the equivalent of 300 pesos, was a lucky random find in a flea market!😱

I forgot and overlooked that one of the books was inscribed by Alasdair Gray. 😳Lucky buyer! The book has been shipped ou...
22/08/2024

I forgot and overlooked that one of the books was inscribed by Alasdair Gray. 😳
Lucky buyer! The book has been shipped out.🤣

For sale: The Making of a Poem. A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Strand & Boland.450 + shipping "Two of our foremost ...
15/08/2024

For sale: The Making of a Poem. A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Strand & Boland.
450 + shipping

"Two of our foremost poets provide here a lucid, straightforward primer that "looks squarely at some of the headaches and mysteries of poetic form": a book for readers who have always felt that an understanding of form (sonnet, ballad, villanelle, sestina, among others) would enhance their appreciation of poetry. Tracing "the exuberant history of forms," they devote one chapter to each form, offering explanation, close reading, and a rich selection of examplars that amply demonstrate the power and possibility of that form."

• trade paperback
• very good condition

MoP: Gcash BDO BPI
MoD: LBC only COP or door to door

Used books. Available.LBC only, COP or door to door Gcash BDO BPI Comment "mine" on individual photo if you wish to buy.
15/08/2024

Used books. Available.
LBC only, COP or door to door
Gcash BDO BPI
Comment "mine" on individual photo if you wish to buy.

08/08/2024

Destashing some books from my shelves soon.
LBC COP only though.

To improve my German and expand my vocabulary, I try to read familiar literature in the original text -- familiar, so I ...
21/07/2024

To improve my German and expand my vocabulary, I try to read familiar literature in the original text -- familiar, so I know how the story goes and I can try to translate in my head without a dictionary.

The opening sentence of Kafka's Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis/The Transformation) presents right at the outset a formidable problem for English translators.

I was accustomed to the idea that Gregor Samsa was transformed into a cockroach. But Kafka's opening line is actually vague and incredibly layered : "...zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt."

The word Ungeziefer is not commonly used and it literally means vermin, a collective term for any animal, usually small and wild, that is perceived to be harmful to crops or to carry disease. ( A pest! ). It is not necessarily an insect. It could also refer to coyotes or weasels or any agriculture-unfriendly animal.

It gets more interesting when you take note that the word is a negation of Geziefer ( un-Geziefer). The latter word comes from old High German, and it refers to an animal worthy for sacrifice: pure, clean, healthy, strong and without any physical defect. The word is usually encountered in old or biblical texts.

The succeeding sentences qualify this Ungeziefer as some kind of insect -- but not something you can easily identify in the physical world. It has a hard armor-like back ( panzerartig harten Rücken) ; its abdomen is segmented by arched stiffeners ( von bogenförmigen Versteifungen geteilten Bauch); and it has many pitifully thin legs (vielen....kläglich dunnen Beine) that helplessly flicker before his eyes (flimmerten ihm hilflos vor den Augen.). The last line brought to my mind something like a caterpillar.

The article after this link gives the different English translations of the opening sentence:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/may/13/kafka-metamorphosis-translations

It is not always easy to find English books in southwest Germany (Baden-Württemberg). Even in the big bookstores the ran...
15/07/2024

It is not always easy to find English books in southwest Germany (Baden-Württemberg). Even in the big bookstores the range of choices is usually limited to contemporary bestsellers, and even these books come out within a year in German translations. The best place to find English books would be in the weekend flea markets -- but even here the pickings are rather slim: mostly the popular vampire or YA dystopian series and crime bestsellers, typically costing € 3-5 each ( roughly Php 180-300 ). The prices of secondhand books here are roughly in line with what one usually pays for in online secondhand bookshops in the Philippines.💸📖

Imagine my joy when I spotted a Penguin Modern Classic. And this is a title that I've never heard of before. As someone who had been starved of English books, I tore through the story. And surprisingly this turned out to be very good and intelligent science fiction. The author was a prominent British astrophysicist who was credited for having coined the term "Big Bang", although as a scientist he was opposed to the idea. Apparently many thought he was unjustly ignored for the Nobel Prize for his work on the formation of stars. 💥

Now don't be intimidated by the background information. The story has just enough "hard" science and physics that are relevant to the narrative, rendered in clear prose that a reasonably educated reader can follow. The flow of the story is well-paced, but it bogs down a bit in one or two spots. The build up to the climax and the apocalyptic climax themselves are intense. And the twist, revealed two thirds of the way, is unexpected. 😲

There are other interesting aspects in the story from a sociological and historical standpoint: how discoveries are made in science, how scientists collaborate and work together in making these discoveries, how they make mistakes -- and how they recognize their mistakes, but more importantly how they correct and make progress from their mistakes. Very interesting also to read about how computing was done in the 50s/60s (?), how "computer" programs were written and fed to the machine, and then waiting for it to crunch the data for 24-48 hours 😁. Towards the end one reads a "debate" about the nature of intelligence, terrestrial and non-terrestrial.

Overall this book now belongs as one of my top science fiction books, next in rank but not alongside Lem's Cyberiad and PKD's Ubik.🥰

01/04/2024

Easter Sunday, Karlsruhe, Germany.
I was fortunate to witness a beautiful game by GM Magnus Carlsen (white) against Germany's #1 GM Vincent Keymer (black) at the Grenke Classic. Karlsruhe is a two-hour train ride from where I reside. 🚂🚉🚇

The game was a tense positional struggle arising from an uncommon line of the Nimzo-Indian defense. It followed a common "narrative" theme in chess: Black tried to create space for its pieces to move in by attacking the center through pawn breaks, while White stubbornly kept the position closed by refusing the pawn exchange and pushing its pawns forward. 💥The tension was almost palpable in the middlegame when the major pieces ( Queens and rooks ) started massing in the kingside and both Kings marched to safety to the queenside. 😬You knew that the game was about to take a decisive turn, and indeed White broke through the h-file with the major pieces. Black tried to generate counterplay in the center by pushing e4, a move which I thought was bad but was considered a good one by the computer. 🤦 The e pawn fell just a few moves later and the open e file allowed the white rook to infiltrate. After a few more exchanges, White pushed the passed f pawn forward and won.

When GM Keymer resigned, the mostly German crowd broke into applause in appreciation of a fine game by the chess GOAT GM Magnus Carlsen.

Letting go of this hoard of approximately 3,000 books: a mix of classics, nonfiction, history, philosophy, Filipiniana, ...
17/03/2024

Letting go of this hoard of approximately 3,000 books: a mix of classics, nonfiction, history, philosophy, Filipiniana, etc. Take all, including the storage boxes. Preferably Metro Manila buyers or thereabouts, for logistic reasons. The hoard has to be picked up from a warehouse in Makati. Pickup costs care of the buyer. PM for details.

Book hunting in Paris. P.1After four decades I was gifted the beautiful opportunity of visiting this iconic bookshop in ...
30/04/2023

Book hunting in Paris. P.1
After four decades I was gifted the beautiful opportunity of visiting this iconic bookshop in the Notre Dame area : Shakespeare and Company. It was already closing time (6pm) on our first visit, so we returned the following day. The shop has two sections: one where it sells brand new books and another section for secondhand and antiquarian books. The queue to the first was long and stretched all the way to the street. Thankfully the secondhand books section was nearly empty. The prices for preloved books are steep relative to the Philippine peso: secondhand vintage penguin mass market paperbacks (orange or gray borders) cost 6 euros on average. If you are lucky to come across these books in Booksale you can get them for at least 50 pesos. But the shop also offers fantastic first editions and antiquarian books ( e.g. Histories by Herodotus 🙀). Unfortunately taking photos inside the shop is not allowed.

Unang gala sa Alemanya.Stadtbibliothek Stuttgart. 😱😍
10/03/2023

Unang gala sa Alemanya.
Stadtbibliothek Stuttgart. 😱😍

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